2 PHANTOMS vs 28 MiGs: The Epic First Dogfight Of The Yom Kippur War Analysed

The Air Battle Of Ophir is a classic dogfighting tale. The surprise attack. The insurmountable odds. The outrageous kill ratio. It has the lot.

Curiously it has somehow avoided the same kind of detailed scrutiny that similar tales from other wars have attracted. In this video I tell the story of the battle with as much cross referencing of sources as I can. I then analyse the claims and counter-claims about what happened 50 years ago in the early afternoon of the 6th of October 1973.

I hope you enjoy this one. Given the lack of accurate accounts of the action it took me a long while to get to a view on the action that I believed in.

Sources/ Notes:

Amir Nachumi is a funny and very engaging speaker. He has been interviewed on numerous occasions about the battle. There are variations on the story each time - to be expected with the passing of history. What is notable is that he has little recollection of most of the actions in the battle. See what you make of these:
'How The War Fell on Me' (2013)    • Amir Nachumi's Story - How the War Fell Up...  
Eagle 2016 interview:    • Eagle 2016: Amir Nachumi  

Arab MiGs Volume 5 was a great source of Egyptian testimony on the battle: https://www.harpia-publishing.com/nod...

IDF account of the battle: https://www.iaf.org.il/9559-55861-en/...

The maps in the battle were based on my assessment of the speed of the aircraft, testimony from pilot interviews and by looking at the few pictures of the action. I am not an expert on the local geography of Sharm El Sheik and there are few pictures of it from the time. What I would say is that the other popular video on this story has the action happening far too close to the runway. Lovely animations though.